Danu Regalado Rides for Hope

Written By: Rachel Putman

Hoping to promote empathy and inclusion for people with disabilities, UAFS sophomore Danu Regalado will ride about 4,000 miles from California to Washington, D.C., this summer with Journey of Hope.

Danu is a sophomore electrical engineering major at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith, and a member of Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity. Both Journey of Hope and the Ability Experience, the nonprofit it supports, are central to the fraternity’s mission to empower individuals with disabilities through advocacy, awareness, and service.

“I wanted to push the message that people with disabilities simply have different abilities, and that they shouldn’t have a stigma against them,” Danu said. “I also wanted to grow myself through the experience and, hopefully, help my community to grow as well.”

“It means a lot to me personally,” he said, explaining that a pair of diagnoses – ADHD for himself, and autism for his cousin – shaped his childhood in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. 

“There was such a stigma against us for acting differently in school,” he said. “I didn’t ever notice anything I considered odd or strange, but the way people talked about us, like we were incapable of completing some tasks because we seemed different from them, always upset me.”

“We simply did things differently, he said. “We weren’t any less capable. We just had skills in different areas. So, I want to use this opportunity through Journey of Hope to change that stigma as much as possible,” Danu said.

The ride will be as physically demanding as it will be emotionally. 

Danu said he expects to cover roughly 70 miles a day, so over the past several months, he’s been endurance training on his bike, while adding strength training to his workout routine at the UAFS Recreation and Wellness Center.

He said he’s also been working to prepare for the mental challenge of long days on the road, and the burst of social energy that will be expected as they travel from point to point.

“All the outreach I have had to do and prepare for has been a steep learning curve,” he said. “It’s something I have never done at this scale, but it has been quite fun to get to connect with my community more, and it has taught me a lot,” he said.

He said he has been told the first two weeks of the ride can be especially difficult and expects repetition to be one of his biggest tests.

“I have been told that the first two weeks can be rough. I worry about going a little stir crazy as my ADHD makes repetition hard, but I have been working on it well, and I hope that the people I will be biking with will be understanding,” he said.

Danu credited the community he’s built at UAFS for his enthusiasm preparing for the ride.

“My partner, Martha Cantu, has been very supportive and helpful, as well as the bike shop Champion Cycling; they have been incredibly helpful. And the staff at UAFS have been so incredibly supportive and helpful throughout the process,” he said.

By the end of the ride, Danu said he hopes his effort encourages more people in Fort Smith to support neighbors with disabilities and stay engaged in that work.

“I hope that by the end of the ride, people here in Fort Smith will be more interested in helping their community and our friends with disabilities,” he said. “And that the experience fuels me to continue the mission even after the ride is over.”

“I want people to see that I am doing this with the hope that they might be more empathetic of other people’s situations, so that there can be more kindness in our community. And so that we can all strive to lift each other up, so there are fewer odd looks at people with disabilities and more drive for understanding their situations.”

To support Danu on his journey, donations can be made at: https://support.abilityexperience.org/fundraisers/Danuregalado/journey-of-hope